In the digitally-driven business world where business operations and assets run on advanced technology, building strong security against emerging cyber threats is essential. Protecting the IT environment is important, as fixing vulnerabilities is much easier than dealing with an incident of a breach. Organizations need to be proactive in evaluating their IT infrastructure to identify and fix exploitable vulnerabilities. Although having firewalls, antivirus, intrusion detection systems, and such defence mechanisms in place, hackers can still attack your systems by exploiting unknown or undetected vulnerabilities. Such vulnerabilities could be anything from having weak passwords to misconfigurations, poor patch management, or even lapse in physical security systems and lack of awareness. This can definitely lead to organizations falling a victim to a wide range of cyber threats such as malware, phishing, ransomware, and/or other social engineering tactics. So, organizations must seriously consider performing regular vulnerability assessments to identify such lapses and loopholes in the systems, network, applications, and processes. That said, let us today understand what is vulnerability assessment, its significance and how can it be effectively performed.
What is a Vulnerability Assessment?
Vulnerability assessment is a security test that identifies known and unknown exploitable vulnerabilities in systems. The assessment is an automated process performed using advanced scanning tools for identifying vulnerabilities. It provides a comprehensive review of systems, applications, and networks that are prone to attacks. A vulnerability test is a highly technical assessment process that can help organizations determine and fix security issues. The assessment also evaluates the effectiveness of the security controls in place and gauges the level of risk exposure. So, in an evolving threat landscape where there is a constant risk of cyber-attacks conducting vulnerability assessment is crucial. Let us see how and why vulnerability assessment should be performed at a regular interval in an organization.
Why should one conduct a Vulnerability Assessment?
Performing a Vulnerability Assessment is significant for an organization’s security and compliance program. Organizations will benefit from this detailed assessment in many ways. An effective vulnerability assessment helps-
- Facilitates data classification and inventory of devices with sensitive information
- Identifies known and unknown exploitable vulnerabilities in systems, networks & applications
- Determines security lapse in systems and processes
- Provides insight on the level of risk exposure
- Provides a security record for future assessment and analysis.
Overall, the assessment gives an insight into the effectiveness of security controls, and risk exposures to the assets and IT Infrastructure in the organization. For making most of the assessment and leveraging its benefits, organizations must regularly perform vulnerability assessments on their IT infrastructure. On that note, let us see how organizations can perform an effective vulnerability assessment. We have shared a guide that can help organizations perform vulnerability assessments effectively. Take a look at these steps to understand how the assessments are performed.
Guide to Performing Vulnerability Assessment
Vulnerability scans are automated processes performed using advanced tools. However, before conducting the scan, there are a few steps involved that give you a direction in performing the assessment. Here are the 6 steps involved that we have explained below-
- Initial Assessment – In the first phase, before performing the vulnerability scan, organizations need to define their goals and scope of assessment The tester must scan the IT infrastructure to discover networks, systems, and applications that fall in the scope of assessment. This provides the tester with a direction for conducting the vulnerability assessment effectively. The initial phase involves planning and gathering of all relevant information, resources, and necessary details for conducting the assessment.
- Asset Discovery & Classification- The organization needs to run a quick scan to identify sensitive data and/or assets and classify them based on priority. It is important that organizations identify where the sensitive data resides and classify the data that is critical to business. Often lack of visibility into the IT infrastructure results in vulnerabilities causing security failures and lapse. However, conducting vulnerability assessment allows mapping of assets and evaluating the risk exposure to each category of data, based on their sensitivity.
- Vulnerability Scans
This phase involves the actual assessment and detection of vulnerabilities. So, once the environment is thoroughly scanned and necessary information is gathered, the tester conducts the vulnerability assessment to discover areas of exploit in systems, networks, and applications that fall in scope. This would include identifying poor patches, misconfigurations, coding errors, etc. that open opportunities for exploitation. Using highly advanced technical tools the automated assessment conducted generates reports with details of the risk exposure and its impact on business. Thereafter, based on the assessment reports, a thorough risk analysis is conducted that provides guidance for fixing the issues and closing gaps in the system.
- Analysis & Risk Classification
Risk analysis and classification is one of the most important phases of vulnerability assessment. Conduct a detailed analysis of the vulnerabilities identified to determine thecauses of the vulnerabilities, their potential impacts, and methods to remediate them.This requires the classification of risk to determine the severity of vulnerabilities and damage that it could cause to sensitive data.The goal is to classify the level of risk exposure and guide organizations to make an informed decision on allocating of resources. This way organizations can prioritize and address issues based on the severity of the risk.
- Assessment Reports & Remediation
Assessment reports are crucial for addressing the security issues identified. Once the vulnerabilities are identified the next step is to find a way to fix them. The findings detailed in the report are utilized for developing methods or techniques for closing the gaps. The report works as a guide for organizations to implement security measures. The IT team can strategize techniques to implement for resolving the issue and fixing the identified vulnerabilities. However, it is important to note that the remediation process is based on the priorities set during the analysis and risk classification phase. Remediation involves fixing the vulnerabilities by deploying additional security measures that close the identified gap and prevent any exploitation.
- Reassessment
Reassessment should be conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of security measures and controls implemented. This is to ensure that the vulnerabilities that were identified are addressed and closed. Besides, we strongly recommend organizations to regularly conduct vulnerability assessments to ensure they secure their IT infrastructure from time to time and stay ahead of the evolving threat landscape.
Conclusion
Vulnerability assessments are critical for building a strong cybersecurity posture. Going by the number of vulnerabilities that are merging each day and the complexity of the organization’s infrastructure it is absolutely essential that such assessments are performed at least once a year. Identifying vulnerabilities and fixing them before the hacker finds them is crucial to prevent incidents of a breach. Performing regular vulnerability assessment on the IT Infrastructure goes a long way in building a robust cybersecurity defence and dramatically decreases the possibility of cyber-attacks.
